PLANNED HOLIDAYS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27291, 18 January 1950, Page 4

PLANNED HOLIDAYS

The almost complete closing down of business activity in Dunedin between Christmas and mid-January is a practice of comparatively recent origin. Perhaps some liberalising of holiday conditions was necessary but, if so, the reform has been too drastic and serious thought should be given to modifying it. As a visitor stated a few days ago in the course of some comments on this subject, a long static period is not good for the business life of a city. It can hardly be disputed that, at the very least, the present system causes many inconveniences. Those who do not participate in the general holiday are penalised, and those who come on holiday from other parts of the country are prevented from making the most of their visit to the city. And there are many visitors to Dunedin at this time. As was obvious recently, they are reduced to “ window shopping ” an unsatisfactory pastime, thwarting alike to businessmen and potential customers. Nor are the interests of the employee unaffected. The secretary of the Otago-Southland Manufacturers’ Association, Mr F. L. Hitchens, expressed 'himself very reasonably when he suggested that it would be in the interests of all employees if a system could be adopted in summer to allow the minimum needs of the community to be met during the holidays. The modern city is too complex an organism for all activity to be stopped for a period, so all its inhabitants cannot take their holidays at the same time. A system of “ staggered ” holidays is, therefore, already in operation. It is time that efforts were made to ascertain in what ways this system could be extended. Through co-operation and mutual agreement among employers it is surely possible to arrange something of a service rota during the Christmas and New Year period. The matter is one of some urgency for a convention is becoming established, although it lacks logical bases, that the main holidays of the year should also fall at this season. Christmas and New Year are observed as holidays in the northern hemisphere but the main business and school holidays do not follow on. It is not even as if this particular period is when the best summer weather is generally experienced. The timing of the long school vacation is an influencing factor, but it is not impossible that this could be adjusted. “There is a natural

correspondence between the exodus from the schools and the influx to the resorts,” the Economist once remarked in a note on staggered holidays, “ but it is not one of mathematical equivalence.” It is also possible, as has been suggested previously in this column, that travel and tourist concessions could be offered for periods other than that when the holiday traffic is at its height. These might be effective in countering the attraction of the Christmas-New Year season. The holiday problem, as it may be called, has developed simply because no serious thought has been given to the subject of holidays as a whole. There is no reason why it should remain such a problem.